New Lambs and Pickup Locations

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February 28, 2018

New Lambs and Pickup Locations

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As you know on the farm we try to work with nature instead of go to war with nature. Practically that means we raise climatically adapted animals, accept a seasonal rhythm to our work, and that we try to plan our animal births for pleasant weather (spring and fall) and an abundance of green pasture.

But this winter we have had quite a surprise! You see..... about 1/3 of the sheep have given birth in the last month. While they are impossibly cute they are also way early. Last summer we waited an additional three weeks to remove the males from the herd and they apparently made ample use of the time.

We feel blessed that the weather turned warmer towards the end of January and has been pretty amiable for February. Despite the cold the young lambs are doing quite well. A testament to hardy genetics and fantastic mothers.

In addition to our lambscapades Mariah and I had an opportunity to visit White Oaks Pastures in Georgia. They practice large scale regenerative agriculture and welcomed us down for a tour. We learned a lot from the trip and Mariah got a few ideas for a BNB cabin she has been dreaming about starting.

Our goal in visiting farms is to learn better ways to restore the land through regenerative agricultural practices and how to better serve you - the families who trust us to provide nutrient rich food for them. We don't take that responsibility lightly. We are also trying to provide nutrient rich food for our family. Judah (our son) is our litmus test. We won't offer anything to another family that we don't believe would be safe, nutrient rich, and nourishing for Judah. That is a high standard, but it is a standard that you deserve as you seek out real food for your family.

New Pickup Locations, Times, and Home Delivery

We want to serve you better! To do that we are now trialing home delivery and have added additional pickup locations. Want to learn more about pickup locations near you? Times, schedules, and more?

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How Can We Help?

We earnestly want to provide useful information (recipes, guides, facts, information, how-to) to help you nourish your family. But we are not sure what would be most useful. Please take a moment to send an email to let us know what would be most useful for you.

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It is an Honor to be your farmers!

-David, Mariah, and Baby Judah

Our New Lake

On the farm, we plan out our regenerative grazing well ahead of time to ensure that the soil, plants, and livestock all benefit from the sybiotic relationships that exist from temporary peridic grazing between all three.Sometimes though the weather has other plans and we have to adapt. Haha case in point about two weeks ago we got just under 9 inches of rain in 36 hours. Now on our farm a majority of the rain still just soaked into the ground through healthy root channels and pore spaces from years of planned regenerative grazing. For farms for miles around us though most of that water quickly ran off and into creeks and rivers. This caused a creek on the back of our farm to flood well outside of its banks. When I went down that morning to check on the sheep I was quite surprised to see that we had a new lake on the farm!You see we have a 60 acre area of bottom ground (low elevation ground with deep soil near to a creek or river). When I got there about 25 acres was underwater!!! This was just part of it but you wan see the sheep's watering trough is underwater - haha they certainly weren't thirsty!Thankfully as the water rose the sheep just slowly meandered to the north to higher ground. They do not like water at all and will not willingly ford even a shallow stream so I was quite glad they had not gotten cut off on one of the now islands of land that had just the day before been the higher areas of the low bottom fields!Later that afternoon, Judah and Ephraim went to look at our new lake and reported that they could not see the watering tank. I thought that was kind of strange but figured they just missed seeing it as it hadn't rained at all that day. As I pondered it for a few more hours though I got to thinking that they are actually very reliable little scouts and they know what it looks like. On a hunch I went back down there only to discover that upriver flooding had continued to pour more water into our bottom and we now had a 55 acre lake!!!!Everything in that video and pictures that had been still land was now underwater and the sheep were at the very top of the field. A gate was promptly opened and they were let out of the low bottom fields completely onto the much drier upland fields. Thankfully everything was fine and stunningly the next day all the water had receded and our lake was gone. A new layer of top soil had been deposited on our thickly vegetated bottom fields as well which will be nice for long term fertility but in the short term made the forage quite muddy so even though we had originally planned for the sheep to graze those bottom fields for about two weeks (split into several 3-4 day subdivisions) they in fact only spent two days there. Well on the farm sometimes you just have to adapt and that's just what we did. We made a new grazing plan, skipped the rest of the bottoms for a few weeks until some rain could wash the dirt off of the grass and things could dry up a bit. Haha basically adapt and improvise. Thankfully the bottom does not flood very often (this is the first time in about 8 years) but when it does we can get a very large lake overnight + ducks :)I hope things aren't too wet your way.

New Lambs and Pickup Locations